The scripture for today, May 26, is 1st Thessalonians 5:26 as found in the New Testament of the Bible:

“Brothers, pray for us.”

Do you have a prayer list? There are many people we can pray for besides ourselves. Often prayers get bogged down and short because the only person we “remember” in prayer is ourselves. Well, and maybe a relative or two.

There are many people who need your prayers: Your family is obvious. How about your neighbors? If you don’t know their names, pray for them by house or apartment number. What about the newspaper? Everyone of those bad-news stories is crying out for prayer. The school near you needs your prayers ~ students, teachers, administrators, janitors. It doesn’t matter whether you have a child in that school; pray for them anyway. Who are your local government officials? Not liking them doesn’t make any different, for Jesus said we are to pray for our enemies too. And that leads to the list of your enemies; do you have any at your work place? Include them too. It’s pretty hard to resent someone you pray for.

One other thing you might try doing in addition to having a prayer list: Have an answered-prayer list. Write down when you pray for someone, then when it is answered. Keep it as a reminder when you are down and don’t think He’s ever going to answer your requests. God does care after all.

And speaking of requests, by the time you’re done praying for all the other people on your prayer list, you won’t have a lot of time to pray for yourself. And that is okay too, for others are praying for you!